Before the Heir

Chapter 13: Protego Diabolica

Lestrange Tomb No POV

The four of them entered the tomb as they heard voices.

Kama: you, go back. Move! Out of the way! If I must kill you as well as Corvus, I shall.

Leta: stop! Yusuf.

Kama: is that really you? My little sister?

Axel: <apparates in front of Credence and Nagini> put that wand away before you get more than an eye parasite.

Credence; so he's your brother. Who am I?

Leta: I don't know.

Credence; I'm tired of living with no name and no history. Just tell me my story, then you can end it.

Kama; your story is our story. Our story.

Leta: no, Yusuf.

Kama and the others went to the middle of the tomb as Kama started telling his tale.

Kama: my father was Mustafa Kama, pureblood of Senegalese descent and most accomplished. My mother, Laurena, was equally highbred, a noted beauty. They were deeply in love. They knew a man of great influence from a famous French pureblood family. He desired her. Lestrange used the Imperius Curse to seduce and abduct her. I tried to prevent it, but he attacked me. That was the last time I ever saw her. She died giving birth to a little girl. <turns to Leta> you. The news of her death drove my father insane. With his dying breath my father charged me to seek revenge. Kill the person Lestrange loves best in the world. I thought at first it'd be easy. He had only one close relative. You. But he...

Leta: say it.

Kama: he never loved you. He remarried not three months after her death. He loved her no more than he had loved you. But then his son, Corvus, was born at last. And that man who had never known love was filled with it. All he cared about was little Corvus.

Credence: so this is the truth? I am Corvus Lestrange?

Kama: yes.

Leta: no.

Kama: yes.

Leta: no.

Kama: realizing that Mustafa Kama's son had sworn revenge, your father sought to hide you where I couldn't find you. So he confided you to his servant, who boarded a ship for America.

Leta: he did send Corvus to America, but...

Kama: his servant, Irma Dugard, was a half-elf. Her magic was weak, and therefore left no trace I could follow. I had only just discovered how you had escaped, when I received news I never expected. The ship had gone down at sea. But you survived, didn't you? Somehow, someone had pulled you from the water. "A son cruelly banished. Despair of the daughter. Return, great avenger, with wings from the water." There stands the despairing daughter. You are the winged raven, returned from the sea, but I... I... I'm the avenger of my family's ruin. I pity you, Corvus. But you must die.

Leta: Corvus Lestrange is already dead! I killed him!

Everyone looked at her as she used magic to bring the family tree box to her and she opened it. A fake tree started rising from it.

Leta: my father owned a very strange family tree. It only recorded the men. The women in my family were recorded as flowers. Beautiful. Separate. My father sent me to America with Corvus. Irma was to pose as a grandmother with two grandchildren. Corvus never stopped crying. I never wanted to hurt him. I only wanted to be free of him. Just for a moment. Just a single moment.

It didn't take them long to realize, Leta switch Corvus with someone else's baby. That woman's boat went under the water... and Corvus sank down.

The family tree showed a flower gripping the branch under Corvus name as Corvus picture and branch started withering away.